One thing I actually would agree with Bertie Ahern on is that the only poll that matters is the one on polling day. That said, it’s no surprise to see FG doing well, the general mood is that they’re doing well at Brexit.
They’ve failed at housing, which is significant, but that’s not the only issue Ireland is facing.
But mainly the competition is poo.

Sectoral Brexit impact assessments. As pointed out by Listrade a few days ago none, zero, zilch. How can anyone have confidence in Brexit being any semblance of a success when what should have been basic preparation was not done? Extraordinary.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides for herself that she’s had enough – ulster taliban on one side, frothing tory know-nothings on the other side of her. Who could be fupped dealing with that? Cameron saw it coming and cashed in.

Well that was then and this is now although it is interesting that Cameron is back in the media a bit more.

I just don’t get it. How can you negotiate trade terms when you don’t know what the impact of those deals is going to be? I expect you are going to see a lot more HP committees calling this government to account now, and rightly so.

“how can you negotiate trade terms when you don’t know what the impact of those deals is going to be?”
it’s not easy to predict the future. I’ve worked on “impact assessments” and they are mostly wishful thinking, sorry, best estimates. You put a load of numbers into a spreadsheet and then tweak them – sales will increase by 4%, costs will decrease by 3%, no say 5%, etc. etc until you have a final figure – but (by it’s nature) is based on loads of assumptions so is rather worthless.

If you apply this to a complicated set of trade deals – you don’t know the parameters of your assumptions until you know the details of the trade deals – but the deal is dependant on the outcome of your parameters. And there are so many intangibles that surround the whole thing – one example if the strength of Sterling. This, I imagine, would be a huge factor in any impact assessment. But there is no way of predicting which way Sterling will go (or how far) so all your numbers will be worthless.

@Cian, you’ve a point on the value of an impact assessment, but the economic impact isn’t the only thing that needs to be identified.

The economic impacts in the EU assessments don’t really extend beyond stating what the current cost/revenue is and saying that will go or have to be met some other way. The main purpose of the EU assessments is just how complex and tangled the EU is with all sectors.

It’s the political, legal, economic and operational impacts of Brexit that the UK need to have assessed. Unless their plan is total hard exit, there is no simple compromise. From the EU assessments, it’s like Chaos Theory, you fix one issue and that causes major problems in another area.

@Listrade, thanks.
I suppose they could do the “Hard Brexit” assessment for each sector.

My difficulty, above, is how to assess the impact of a “Soft Brexist” because the “Soft” hasn’t been defined. But if they at assess the “Hard Brexit” by sector would give them an idea of the key area to avoid a ‘Hard Brexit’ as a starting point.

That’s the farcical thing, they don’t know what type of exit they want to assess the impact. The party is so divided that they can’t get a clear policy, but that’s made worse by not understanding the implication of any type of Brexit.

They should have done the impact assessment immediately after the vote, then looked at what is the best policy and exit (yes in their favour), the triggered article 50. That way the EU is on the back foot and you have a plan to stick to.

The NI issue is a huge embarrassment. The deal was great for Ireland, but horrible for DUP and unionists. May either didn’t understand that or didn’t care. Both not great, especially if the latter as the DUP are the only thing keeping you in power, you should care a bit about sacrificing them. Not great on the former as what the eff have you been talking about on these daily calls to Arlene??

But the entire problem in NI is clearly spelled out in the EU impact assessment. It would have taken an hour to read and realise that what was proposed was bad for you confidence and supply partners.

This is so bad now that I think it’ll affect international view of EU as well as UK. It’s a cluster fupp, but there’ll be little confidence that EU can get a deal that will guarantee security for manufacturing, etc. The EU will be laughing at the shambles, but internationally there’ll be pressure for the EU to step up and make this work or go away.

Only solution as I see it is revoke article 50 and a general election. Let parties spell out their Brexit policy/cancellation and then new government starts article 50 from scratch (or not) after a proper impact assessment.

This process needs actual legal and economic expert, not the civil servants and “special advisors” the EU and UK have loaded the committee with. That old chestnut of evidence-based policy that all governments pay lip service to.

@ Cian. There may be some guesstimates within an impact assessment but if they were totally useless then they wouldn’t be used at all. I know there was talk of some sort of impact analysis but has there even been a risk assessment done?

As for the non definition of ‘soft’, I doubt if there are that many variations to prevent scenarios being created and weighted.

Vote Leave (Boris Johnson) is on record as saying they would stay in the single market. Leave.EU (Farage) said they wanted the Norwegian model.

That’s as close to a soft exit as you can get or at least is defined.

Though they probably did an impact assessment which said that both options require freedom of movement and regulatory alliance, which is why they abandoned them and pretended the vote was always about a hard exit.

I was thinking about this last night; if Cameron, instead of actually calling the feckin’ referendum like a lunatic, had fobbed off the Eurosceptics in his party by doing the “sectoral analyses” as a precursor to a referendum, we almost certainly wouldn’t be in this mess. He could’ve held them off for a year longer and then, when the results came in, it should’ve been patently obvious to everyone that it was a bad idea, making it much harder for anyone to push for it.

@Charger what’s your explanation for the sticky toffee that the Tories find themselves mired in now, eh? can’t even get the basic paperwork right but yet it’s somehow time to conquer the world again for this 2nd industrial revolution/coming?? maybe my small brain just can’t comprehend the splendour and riches just around the corner…

The David Davies video where he admits that Conservatives did no homework at all on the possible financial impact Brexit would have on their industries is quite extraordinary. Hilarious! And he’s giggling! Its so Outrageous for a Government to behave this way. Hopefully that opened the eyes of some Brexit voters, it might start hitting home that they need to change course quickly